I had a fun time at the forum. There were five speakers, but I don’t remember all their names.
The first speaker was a lady. She talked about the four things to do to discovery my mission. 1. Take time to be holy. She talked about finding time to do something that you loved, something that relaxed you. 2. Strengthen the physical. Keep yourself healthy so that you won’t be hindered from doing your mission. 3. Expose yourself to greatness. Have you ever heard the expression “you are what you eat” ? I think it goes the same with who you hang out with. If you hang out with kids who ditch school all the time, most likely you will ditch at least once because your friends talked you into it. But if you hang out with good, or great, people, you will do good or great things. 4. Perform an act of service. I hear this all the time in church. You really do feel good about yourself when you serve other people, and more likely than not your mission will be to help people.
She had a lot of stories about great people. She encouraged us to listen to inspiration and to not compare ourselves with others. One activity she had us do was: She asked us to get in a group of at least two people, and each person had to hold on to a pen or pencil. With the pen or pencil you had to draw a picture of your dream house. It turned out to be a very crude box with squares for windows, a tree, and the title Our Dream House. It defiantly wasn’t my idea for my dream house. She explained that sometimes groups were good, and sometimes it was better to be on your own, and that we should not get involved in groups that would bring us down.
The second speaker was Mrs. Kepner, and I knew her before the forum. I like her a lot. She is fun and she had us play a couple games. She also told us she did not want any teenagers in her class, she wanted young adults. She talked about being Great. G for God R for righteous/rely E effect A attitude T truth. She put us in groups and gave us a piece of paper, then had us present the person that the paper was about. My group was doing Florence Nightingale, who was a volunteer medic in a war. The paper said that she made the places she worked in more cleanly and orderly, and that made a huge difference in how many soldiers survived. Most groups did a skit about their person, and one did a rap. That was fun, but our skit was lame.
The third speaker was also fun. First he had us stand up and do a dance and clap and shout. He had us say “yes” or “great” a whole lot. He got on a few people who didn’t say anything, but he was just joking around. He talked about “What do I do with my life?”. He told us that our purpose was to solve problems. That gave me a whole knew insight to what we really do, which is solve problems. Our lives are filled with problems that we have to solve, some of the simpler ones are, problem: hunger. What do you do when you are hungry? You eat something. Problem solved. Then he asked us if it was possible to gather a whole bunch of food and ship it to children who hadn’t eaten the day before. We said yes, it was possible. I don’t really remember how he put it, but he said something about that we couldn’t do that everyday, that we had to solve other problems, too.
The forth speaker was the president of the George Wythe College and he was awesome. First he played a couple songs on his guitar for us. The first song was about him not getting a date, and the second was about people picking on him. Then he showed us words on a whiteboard and showed us the words in sigh-language. Then he told us a King-Kong story in sign-language using the words he had showed us before. That was cool. Then he told us about some things. He showed us other words, and the actual meaning of the different parts of the word. Virtue- I don’t really know exactly what he said, but in the end he said virtue meant fulfilling the purpose for which you were created for. Wisdom- house of roots- this meant you get wisdom thru roots, or sources. Diplomacy- bringing two sides together. Courage- of the heart. He also told us what Entertain and Amusement meant. Entertain- draws in; Amusement- not thinking. He said it was not bad to want to be entertained or amused, but that that shouldn’t be that only thing we want.
The final speaker talked about our inner power. He asked us questions like: What level of power do I have in me? What is my power to be used for? What is the source of my inner power? I thought over these questions. Then he asked us if we could do something great what would it be? I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Then he had us prepare a one minute speech and put us in groups. Everyone in my group gave a little talk. I just said how I like animals and that I wanted to work with them when I grew up. We had a little break. We came back and he had us visualize ourselves doing something great. Helping people. At the end he quoted the Give me liberty or give me death speech. I don’t think I ever heard it before then, but it was cool.
I liked all the speakers, some more, some less. The first and last I didn’t pay much attention to, but maybe that was because A. it was 8:00 in the morning, and I was tired and B. It was late in the day and I had been sitting in the same chair for four hours. In the end I was glad I went, but in the beginning… Anyway, I had fun.
Marlayna Helen Batchelor
Several months ago I saw that Marly was working on her Math-U-See books every day. Pretty soon she is telling me she is ready for the final exam on the Delta level. Five months later she is finished with Epsilon (October 2009). This week she completed the Zeta books and is starting on Pre-Algebra. In a little over a year she has completed 3 years of math studies. I am now noticing Christian start to work on his math every day. He is taking less time on each lesson and picking up the pace. He completed Delta last week and is now working on Epsilon.
